Practical Technology

for practical people.

December 8, 2010
by sjvn01
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Google’s Chrome OS is here… sort of, kind of

Ready to get a copy of Google Chrome OS and test the heck out of it? I was. But, neither of us is going to be able to do it anytime soon. Feh!

Unlike some people I could mention-cough, Zack Whittaker, cough-I do think Google’s Linux-based Chrome OS is far from being redundant and does matter. Potentially, it will matter a lot for business users. Unfortunately, I can’t tell for certain yet.

I can’t tell because instead of releasing a CD or DVD image of the operating system, or even source code for those of us who aren’t afraid to compile operating systems. Google just announced today, December 7th, 2010, that in its Chrome OS “pilot program” that a beta netbook, the Cr-48, will be available to a select group of beta-testers.

Boo! I wanted a beta I could slap on my netbook, an older Dell Mini 9, or into a VirtualBox virtual machine (VM). I think Google is missing a trick here. I, and a few thousand other Linux users who change operating systems and Linux distribution at the drop of a Red Hat, would love to take Chrome OS out for a ride. Most of us would then be more than happy to report back what we found and how it could be improved.

Oh well, so much for that idea. Instead, I’ll just have to petition Google for one of its un-branded Chrome netbooks along with everyone else.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/googles-chrome-os-is-here-sort-of-kind-of/7930

December 6, 2010
by sjvn01
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The Internet’s IPv4’s Clock is Ticking Down

We all know that the Internet’s supply of Ipv4 addresses is running ever lower. What you may not know is that IPv4 exhaustion, when we’re completely out of available IPv4 addresses, is approaching even faster than the experts expected.

The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) announced at the end of the November that we’re down to 2.73% of the Internet’s available IPv4 addresses. In case you haven’t been watching, that indicates that the long expected run on IPv4 Internet addresses has begun.

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December 5, 2010
by sjvn01
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The Three Differences between Chrome OS and Android

On December 7th, Google is expected to announce the release of a laptop with the first version of the Chrome operating system. Concurrently, Google is going great guns with Android. Does Google really need two operating systems? So what’s going on here?

Here’s what Google is up to. Yes, both Android and Chrome OS are Linux-based operating systems. Neither, at the application level, uses the common Linux desktop application programming interfaces (API) that are used by the GNOME or KDE desktops and their applications.

They’re also similar in that both use a common set of techniques to make them more secure. The most important of these is process sand-boxing. What this means is that any Chrome or Android application has just enough access to the system to do its job.

Once you’re past this, the two look and act in very different ways. Here are their main points of difference:

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December 3, 2010
by sjvn01
2 Comments

Linux for the Holidays

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting Linux, has announced a new individual membership drive and promotion for the holidays that makes members eligible to win free Linux.com Store T-shirts, hats, mugs and the like.

According to the Foundation, new members who sign up for an individual Linux Foundation membership between today, December 3 and December 20, 2010 will be automatically entered into a drawing to win one of five U.S. $50 gift cards to the Linux.com Store. The annual membership fee for individuals is $99 U.S. Student membership is $25 U.S. and includes all the same benefits as individual members. These prizes will be available just in time for the holidays.

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December 2, 2010
by sjvn01
3 Comments

Super-Duper Linux Computers

Everyone who follows super-computers knows that they run on Linux. Just one look at the latest Top 500 SuperComputer list confirms that. Today 91.8% of all super-computers run Linux. Alas, if you look at the latest list, you’ll also see that the U.S. now trails China in the super-computers. IBM’s new CMOS Integrated Silicon Nanophotonics chips, though, should soon put the U.S. back in the lead.

Today the fastest of the fast computers is the Tianhe-1A Running full-out, it hits a peak performance of 2.57 petaflop/s (quadrillions of calculations per second).and cruises along at 563.1 teraflops. To do this, it uses 14,336 Intel Xeon CPUs and 7,168 NVIDIA Tesla GPUs and Linux.

That’s impressive. The Tianhe-1A easily races past the Cray XT5 “Jaguar” system at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility in Tennessee. That Cray XTS super-computer is now ranked in second place at 1.75 petaflop/s.

Don’t start weeping for the decline of American technology prowess yet, though. IBM’s new addition to its POWER7 chipset uses Silicon Integrated Nanophotonics to reach new heights in processor speed. In these chips, light instead of electronics is used for its input/output (I/O )interconnects.. This makes it possible to build faster–much faster–super-computers, and eventually servers and PCs.

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December 2, 2010
by sjvn01
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Preventing your own WikiLeaks

As I continue to watch the WikiLeaks saga, I can’ t help thinking, no matter what you think of WikiLeaks, it never would have become gotten so big if it wasn’t for some dumb security mistakes. It’s not, as Jason Perlow pointed out, that the system design itself was defective, it was how it was managed in the field that lead to a flood of secret documents being revealed.

No, Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet) is about as secure as any network can be. But, US Army intelligence analyst, Private First Class Bradley Manning showed how even the best laid security plans are useless if they’re not followed. While SIPRNet materials seemed to have been shared over a secured network, the laptops that Manning used to vacuum down the gigabytes of data, now in WikiLeak’s hands, had a CD/DVD burner on it. According to a Wired report, Manning said, “I would come in with music on a CD-RW labeled with something like ‘Lady Gaga,’ erase the music then write a compressed split file.”

There was no need for any sophisticated network tapping or Mission Impossible heroics here; all he needed was a PC and a blank optical disc and he was in business. Argh!

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